EXPERIMENTATION - 27.03.2014.

Since this project focuses around memories I thought it would be interesting to play around with blurring images and blending them together with others. Certain memories can be clear as anything whereas others can become mixture. I experimented with using the Blur and Smudge tool on Photoshop to see what effects I could create and add to my own images. I particularly love these two images since they were purely accidental to see what would happen. 

The top image was made using the Blur tool and it slowly created a soft focus effect which added a dream-like quality to the photo. I'd like to play around with adding other images to this but I feel this is a powerful image on its own. The second image is a photo of my Grandmother added over the top of the above image. I like how her arms have blended in with the water to create a pleasant calming feeling. I'd like these images to be used for the first half of my narrative idea to show my Grandmother enjoying her family and living her life. 

EXPERIMENTAL SCANS - 27.03.2014.

I have been enjoying the way I've been making my images but thought it would be interesting to see what would happen if I experimented with how I scanned them through instead. I really love how these have turned out! It was mainly a mixture of trial and error but they came out a lot better than expected! I particularly like the second and third image down since the faces merged into each other and created some warped effects that I am excited to work with. 

REFLECTION - 27.03.2014.

Sorry that this post has been so late but I have been so busy I haven't had the chance to sit down and catch up! In the last post I spoke about what constructive thoughts and ideas had come up in my crit with Glynn as to what I could do to create more of a narrative or thread within my images. I decided to focus on my Grandmother and her history since I only have a box which is filled with photographs, a couple of personal items and some letters. My Grandmother was an orphan and unfortunately she, along with us, was never able to find out who her biological parents were. This is something that I have always been fascinated by and so after looking through my recent images I thought it would be nice to have 2 different yet very much connected stories running alongside each other. 

The first side of the narration would be the previous dreamy images I created showing my Grandmother enjoying her own family, holidays and highlighting my admiration for her. The second part will be again a series of images that this time will show a blurred disconnection from herself, her identity and slowly broken memories as well as my own feelings of not having been able to have known her. I think this will create an interesting body of work as a whole as well as being able to share something personal with others.

REFLECTION - 13.03.2014.

A few days I had a group crit with Glyn to show my ideas, current progression and development. I'd spent Monday morning/afternoon playing around with printing my collages onto parchment paper which has a lovely see through quality to it and added a really nice texture to my images. I tried printing out my work in various sizes and thought they worked nicely when they were super small in the middle of the page, although they worked equally as well blown up, filling the entire page. Everyone seemed to enjoy what I had made and it also gave me a chance to explain what thoughts and ideas I had about my project (see here and here!). Glyn made some really good points in how to develop my work further: 

- Some great imagery. 

- Consider the thread that runs through imagery more. 

- Is this a story about your Grandmother that could touch upon Italian culture - broader cultural issues and the issues that affect your family? Or good things? - that could be typically Italian. 

- Love the idea of adding the hand writing. 

- Look at typography to take photos of and maybe incorporate into collages. 

I definitely need to have a clearer thread that connects the images together more, even a narrative of some sort. I forget that this is a personal project and thus need to tell people what I am showing through my work since they wouldn't know otherwise! I'd also like to play around with typography since I think that would work really well against the imagery.

BEACH HOLIDAY - 8.03.2014.

I've really been enjoying cropping into certain sections of my images and here's a collage I made today. I decided to play around with an old photo of my grandmother and thought it would be interesting to see what would happen if I layered it with another photo of the sea. I layered the sea photo over the top and played around with it's opacity and found that the 'Screen' option allowed it to merge into the background as well as filling in the spoon and knife too. I then decided to make a second copy to then enlarge and layer again but this time I concentrated the 'rock' section into the bottom right corner of the photo. The rocks frame the photo nicely and overall it has a lovely dream-like quality. I thought I would zoom into the spoon/knife corner since I love the subtlety of the water taking over their form hinting at the holiday atmosphere.  

REFLECTION - 7.03.2014.

I thought that I would share this on here since this guy will become a crucial part of my project! I managed to buy myself this really lovely digital 35mm Canon camera. I've been testing this out so I can get a feel for how it works and just have some experimental fun!

I've had some ideas floating around my head for other small projects (?) that I could branch off from my main body of work. One of the ideas is to take photos of objects that reflect where I am from that I have around my home, things such as cookbooks, passports, religious imagery, anything that identifies to myself and others as 'Italian'. I would also like to do this around my father's house in Italy when I visit, maybe see if he has anything that is 'English' and reminds him of Norwich/England. Another thought I had was to take photos of 'Italian' restaurants/chains that we have in England and compare them with those in Italy. It would be interesting to take photos of the food served here thats considered to be Italian next to photos of the same dish but made in Italy. Taking photos of  the signs and decor would be interesting too. Finally I had thought about taking 'tourist' photos of what is considered to be Italian stereotypes. 

Maybe this project is slowly taking its own route and will become a crisscross of my Italy and the one that everyone else sees. Or it might be divided into sections of personal memories, a tourist hot spot and a very British Italy but either way I am excited to see what happens. 

REFLECTION - 7.03.2014.

It's been a long time since I have paused and actually reflected on my work since starting this project and today I feel that time has come. This project has been something very personal to me from day one and will continue to, hopefully, allow others to view my memories of Italy as well as an insight into my culture. 

I feel that my work is developing well since I am learning to not stick to working with an image as a whole and allowing myself to crop, zoom and enlarge areas to further work over. This has really helped me look at my collages in a more interesting way and enables me to see how much I can take away from the image without taking away its meaning. I had a very brief feedback session with one of my tutors, Chris, but I felt very disheartened since I haven't spoken to him about my work at all this year so I felt like I didn't explain my work clearly enough. This ended with various suggestions in how to help my images but this made my work take a completely different path, far from my original idea. I decided to stop what I was doing and just take some time in really making sure that I had clear themes with which to work towards. I find that with having so many tutors, each (rightly) having their own opinion of your work, you just can't make everyone happy. So I've carried on making images that I feel are working best for my ideas so far! I will write a short summary below of what I have broken my ideas/themes down to so that I can always come back and refer to them if I ever need to. 

The Breakdown:

- Rome 

- Family 

- Beach Holidays 

Essentially these are the 3 main themes within this project. Obviously for each theme there will be various images that differ from each other but are still connected to one of the themes. I will probably expand the number of themes once I get back from Italy since I will have lots of exciting new photos to work with too.